It would appear that things are neither bawdy bawdy nor rowdy rowdy when it comes to WWE for former wrestler Konnan. This weekend the former WCW star took to twitter to complain about WWE’s treatment of its Latino stars:

This would, of course, refer to current WWE employee and wrestler I totally secretly love Rey Mysterio. Though he’s been riddled with injuries, and his knees are currently held together by paper clips and scotch tape, WWE extended Rey Mysterio’s contract for another year back in May. The shady thing is that they did it without telling him first. See, the WWE will freeze wrestlers contracts during injuries, and since Rey’s resting state is what medical professionals refer to as hella broken, they’ve reasoned that Rey owes them a significant amount of time.

To play a quick game of catch-up, Cody Barbierri (a social media manager for WWE) supposedly made a racist comment at Del Rio, Del Rio in turn slapped him, and was then released. Any punishment for Barbierri has not been disclosed by WWE, but they’ve taken a pretty solid stance that we should be directing any anger we may have at Del Rio for his reaction, and not question what instigated it. Anyone with a sense of common decency has been calling bullshit, but sadly those people seem to be screaming into the abyss.

WWE’s track record with racism is, frankly, atrocious. Recently we’ve watched the half-hearted defenses from Mark Henry, the (I guess) well-meaning but still pretty inherently racist accusations from The Atlantic, and, you know, we’ve watched wrestling during any period of time during it’s existence. While threatening someone is maybe not the way to go, and Konnan is not exactly known for his rational, thought-out twitter diatribes, he’s still the most well-known person speaking up. It seems that the culture of racism in wrestling is so ingrained that it becomes this monolithic, unmentionable thing, especially in the WWE. People who have experienced it tow the line to keep their jobs, or don’t bring it up in hopes of maybe one day getting those jobs back. Complaints of racism or even sexual harassment go unmade, and when they’re brought up, the accusers are spun as bitter and untalented, piping up because they’re not able to hack it.

Konnan might be going about this in a pretty douchey way, but he’s also kind of right. Hopefully more will stand up and take his lead, just…maybe not so much with the threats.

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Konnan is probably right, but he’s always seemed like the worst person in the world to me. Maybe I’m just a mark for his character, but– much like Kevin Nash– he’s never seemed to have anything good to say on social media.

I can definitely vouch for the racism of the wrestling fans. I went to Nitro in Cedar Rapids, IA some years back, and Konnan had a match with Curt Hennig (Mr. Perfect). However, during the whole match there were these two assholes* screaming “Burrito La Raza!” through the whole match. They were so loud you could here them on tv. It was shameful.

(*my brother and I)

PS: Hennig won with a Perfect Plex. Those two assholes* were the only ones cheering.

If you’ve watched wrestling since Max Moon was a thing, and can’t acknowledge that’s it’s often been pretty racist, I don’t know what to tell you. Pay more attention? Maybe try to find a “Best of Cryme Tyme” dvd? Or some Mexicools matches? Or anything before, like, 1988? It’s been a problem in the industry for a long time, and ignoring it or pretending like it doesn’t exist or matter isn’t going to help solve the problem. People have to admit that something is broken before they can start tying to fix it.

Also, who are you waiting on confirmation from, exactly? It sounds like ADR told Konnan that that’s what happened, and it’s not like WWE is going to come out and admit that one of their employees said some racist shit in a press release or anything.

I wonder how this would have gone down had it been a former wrestler rather than a social media keyboard jockey. “ADR had a fight with (old racist) ((read: Michael Hayes))” might just be a wrasslin fable rather than a legal drama.

Glad he had the balls to slap the piss outta him, especially if he laughed in his face. Luckily he has other good professional options to fall back on, unlike the African-American talent who usually don’t, which is why Mark has to lie through his teeth.

I know we kind of traded barbs on the last story posted about ADR but I’m on your side in this one. No sarcasm. I don’t know how Konnan is perceived in Mexico, he may be beloved and that’s well and good for him but anytime I ever saw him on WCW, I changed the channel.

Also, the contractual issues have nothing to do with racism. This is something that Rey and the E need to work out between them, I know K-Dogg wants to book his buddy to some local shows and I have to assume that’s a big motive for him to stoke the fires like this. If anything, Rey’s ethnicity has opened doors for him, especially a guy his size with his move set, it is a huge market and not something I’m used to seeing from the WWE in terms of the opportunities he got. You never saw a guy that size win a top title before at the time, imagine if they got brave in WCW and pulled that feat. Rey’s more of a victim of bad booking (Being “Eddie” basically for WM23, the night he won the title and lost it to Cena right after) than racism.

The WWE does not work on guaranteed contracts, for what he earns, they probably feel like he does owe them the time. That’s their logic, anyway, whether we agree with it or not is why there’s a comment section. I hope they work it out, I personally think he’s done and should retire with his knees being the shape they’re in, he can’t go at that pace anymore and I imagine he’s a proud man that probably won’t admit that.

When did (allegedly) saying something stupid become a bigger crime than assault? In a normal work environment a single, inappropriate and possibly racist remark likely won’t get you fired, but hitting someone certainly can.